Thomas the train - Which line?

[MacMacMoo]

Ds is has some time before he will be old enough to play with Thomas the Train. my MIL said she'd like to start building up our collection and wanted to know which line were would prefer. From what we see there is the wooden railway, take along, and trackmaster.

Which would be the better series to get and with the series which sets would be must haves?

[brittone2]

nak-
Wooden seems to be the overall fav of most people I know.

That said, after the lead recalls on Thomas products made by Learning Curve in the past 1-2 years, if I had it to do over again I'd buy more from companies like Whittle Shortline railroad (made in the USA; spendy though) and Maplelandmark (less expensive than Thomas, and made in the USA). Maplelandmark has 3 scales of trains...one of which is the same size and is compatible with the Thomas and Brio wooden trains.

Ikea has a great inexpensive starter set fwiw. We got that when DS was just starting out.

If you go w/ the Learning Curve Thomas trains, check for AC Moore and Michaels coupons for 40% off. That's how we got most of our sets. Not all AC Moore or Michaels stores carry them, but quite a few do, and if they aren't already on sale, you can use a 40% off coupon to buy sets, making them far more affordable.

[hellokitty]

Don't get the plastic ones with the plastic tracks. They suck down batteries like no tomorrow and the tracks are not very good. I actually prefer our geotrax to our wooden Thomas, b/c I think the wooden Thomas is a rip off. If you can find a used set, that is the way to go, IMO. That is what we ended up doing.

[clc053103]

I actually was going to come on to recommend the "trackmaster" thomas - which is the big plastic engines with plastic trains. However, DS prefers to operate by hand vs by battery, so I stopped putting batteries in them. Very easy for small hands to use.

That being said, we also have wooden thomas, as well as metal thomas and even a large plastic set my mother found at a yard sale....and he plays with all of them.

Definitely suggest CL to buy someone's table and contents, as they cost a fortune!

[KrisM]

We have wooden, but only the trains are Thomas. Tracks are generic and often from ebay. Buildings are Thomas, too.

[fivi2]

We have wood - generic tracks and a few Thomas engines. That has worked out fine.

However, we recently discovered the Duplo Thomas cars and tracks. In all honesty if I had to do it over, I might have just gotten those. As of right now, it is somewhat limited as far as neat track pieces etc, but I assume the line is growing. (?) Those tracks and cars get a lot more play than the wooden ones do (my girls are 3 right now). Before we got the duplo ones, the wooden ones got a decent amount of play (I don't think they were a waste) but the Duplos have taken over for a while now.

[DebbieJ]

Wooden Railway.

Also, if you have a Costco nearby, they sell a compatible train table/set every Christmas. We got our table there and it's very nice. We've since thinned out some of the trains/accessories that came along with it, but they held up to a couple years worth of play.